[Zope3-dev] LDAP Authentication Adapter inside Zope 3 core

[Stephan Richter]

Hello everyone,

I am going to fix the LDAP authentication adapter for PAU. Florent, Dylan and 
Roger have all expressed interest to put the module into the Zope 3 source 
tree, like ``Zope3/src/ldapauth`` (note the name change to a more neutral 
one). The problem with that is, of course, that this authentication package 
requires the ``ldap`` module, which does not ship with the standard Python. 
Thus Zope 3 would not start up and tests would fail, if someone does not have 
``ldap`` installed.

However, in light of recent developments I think we can overcome the problem.

(1) Tests

We only run the ``ldap``-specific tests when the module is installed. The 
pattern to do this is well-established and should be no problem.

(2) ZCML

We only want to load the configuration, when the ``ldap`` package is 
installed. Unfortunately, the ZCML-condition verb "have" is insufficient, 
since the ``ldap`` package does not come with a ZCML file that defines a 
feature. I thus propose to implement a second verb called "have-package" or 
"have-module" that will check whether a particular module is importable. For 
example::

<configure
    zcml:condition="have-package ldap"> ...

I am open to alternative solutions. For example, we could also have a special 
"have" verb case where the feature "package" is specially treated:
``have package ldap``

Thoughts? Comments?

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training